Last night I joined my sister, a friend of hers, and my nephew for a kickass performance by They Might Be Giants at Higher Ground. I saw these guys perform back in the late ’80s when they visited my college, and I swear they look exactly the same as they did back then. The cool thing is, they’ve produced about 20 million albums in the interval, so they had a lot more songs to choose from. The show was great — full of humor, energy, and unexpected wackiness. Highlights for my nephew included battling me with one of the giant foam fingers that were handed out before the show and joining the conga line that John Flansburgh berated into existence halfway through. There were not one, but TWO encores, the second of which included the ever-popular “Istanbul (Not Constantinople)”, introduced with an amazing Spanish-style acoustic guitar performance by Dan Miller.
And if the performance wasn’t good enough, I felt completely at home amongst the nerdy crowd. I had a nice chat with Bill Simmon and Emily Stoneking, and saw a number of other people I recognized. And as I was driving out of the parking lot at 10:45, I guffawed at the sight of a license plate that said “TARDIS”. Yep, pretty much a perfect night.
Was the licence plate on a mini-cooper? If so, the car came all the way from Keene.
I can’t remember what it was, but I would have noticed if it was a Mini Cooper. It’s some other geek!